Mel King and Debbie Clark are going to try to ride their Ryan Duplex (recumbent tandem) to Walt Disney World in Florida. We are leaving on May 19, 2010 and hope to arrive by June 21, 2010. I hope we make it all the way.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Day 21 Bike Fixed - Short Day

We stayed overnight at a Hampton Inn. It was beautiful after some of the places we had stayed. It had hot tub, pool, laundry, breakfast, Wi-Fi and a Chili’s across the street. We knew we would not get away early this morning because the bike shop did not open until 10:00 am. So we lazed around, swam, did the hot tub, and had a leisurely breakfast. It was nice rest as both of us had not really slept well for some reason. I even got in a little work on my course.

The bike was at Phil Murphy’s Bicycle World in Florence, South Carolina. The problem was that we found 4 broken spokes, the wheel out of true, and the brake was rubbing and causing a drag.

At about 11 or so the shop called and said that someone was on the way to pick us up. Alex showed up in a Subaru station wagon, we loaded up, and went to the shop. Phil (the owner and mechanic) had the bike ready (except for air pressure in the tires). He went over everything with us. He had changed 11 spokes. At least 4 were broken. The others were so chopped up by the chain over shifting and getting jammed between the spokes and the rear cluster. He had trued the wheel, adjusted the brakes again, and repositioned the brake shoes. He suggested that the brake might be wearing the side-wall of the rim too much and perhaps a new wheel was in our future. He seemed pretty sure that we would get through this trip but we should get it checked out when we got home.

Finally we rolled the bike into the work area and he used the compressor to pump up all the tires to their proper pressure. We set up all our stuff on the bike, hooked up the BOB trailer, and chatted some more. Then we remembered that we needed to take some pictures. The shop was great. They drove us to a motel and picked us up and fixed our bike. This was spectacular service.

It was great. We rolled out of the parking lot and down the road. The surface was uneven and the traffic was heavy but we were on the road. We stopped at about 6 mil es for a drink and to eat some cereal. We were off again. We were on 76 (crowded) looking for 403 south. We had to ask directions at a corner with very confusing signs. We finally found it and set off. There was a reasonable shoulder, a smooth surface, and little traffic. We got to a bridge over I95 and saw an Econo Lodge. To my complete surprise, Debbie suggested that we stop here at only 13.3 miles into the day. She reasoned that with perhaps 20 or more to go we were in for a late day with several miles off route. We should take this as basically a rest day. The only real downside was that the only restaurant in the area is a greasy spoon (local grill) across the street. We picnicked lunch and went to the grill for sodas and blogging. We will eat dinner here.

Today’s ride: We rode a princely 13.9 miles at 9.6 mph (fastest in quite a while). We were on the bike for 1 hour and 26 minutes. We are now 858 miles into the ride.